Vietnam Politburo Selects First U.S.-Educated Member

Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan (L) shakes hands with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a meeting at the Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing, May 10, 2013.

Reuter- 12 May 2013.
HANOI — Vietnam's ruling Communist Party has appointed for the first time a U.S.-educated official to its powerful politburo, a landmark decision as pressure mounts to reform an economy stagnating after years of boom growth.

The top decision-making body of the party that has ruled Vietnam since 1975 voted to increase its membership and bring in Nguyen Thien Nhan, a deputy prime minister overseeing education, health and technology, it said on its website (dangcongsan.vn).

Nhan, 59, has a master's degree in public policy from the University of Oregon and joins an elite group long dominated by politicians educated locally or in the former Soviet Union.

Vietnam's ruling party is facing its toughest economic challenges in years and has vowed reforms to tackle crippling debt in its banking system, and mismanagement at scores of cash-sapping state-owned firms.

Economists say policymakers have acted effectively to rein in inflation but have been too slow, or reluctant, to implement the sweeping structural changes needed to revive what was a promising ``tiger'' economy now growing at its slowest pace in 13 years, and put Vietnam back on foreign investors' radar.

Vietnam's economy is hamstrung by weak credit growth and consumer demand that has forced 113,000 businesses to close since 2011, when inflation soared to over 20 percent and foreign investors delivered only a sixth of the $64 billion pledged.

The politburo also picked its second female member, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, a deputy chairwoman of parliament. Ngan, also 59, is a former deputy minister of trade and finance. The two appointments will increase the politburo's size to 16 members.

Nhan studied in the former East Germany in the 1970s before being awarded a scholarship to the United States. He also served as vice mayor of Ho Chi Minh City.
SOurce VOAnews

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Posted in: education

Stephen Schwarzman unveils $300m China scholarship fund

Mr Schwarzman said he hoped the new fund would foster "mutual respect" between China and the West

US private-equity magnate Stephen Schwarzman has launched a $300m (£200m) scholarship programme to send 200 foreign post-graduate students to study in China each year.
Mr Schwarzman is donating $100m of his personal $6.5bn fortune to the fund, and is raising a further $200m.
Selected students will spend a year at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Mr Schwarzman said he hoped to foster "a win-win relationship of mutual respect" between China and the West.
The Schwarzman Scholars programme aims to rival the 111-year-old Rhodes Scholarship programme which enables foreign students to study at the UK's University of Oxford.
It is being backed by major, mainly Western firms, many with interests in China.
'Imbalances and tensions' "China's economy is growing at three times the rate of the West, and if that growth continues, China will become the largest economy in the world within the next couple of decades," Mr Schwarzman said in a statement ahead of the funds launch on Sunday.
"Disproportionate levels of growth often create global imbalances and tensions, which will need to be addressed in the decades ahead... For the West, this means developing a far richer and more nuanced understanding of China's social, political and economic context.
"A win-win relationship of mutual respect between the West and China is vital, benefiting Asia and the rest of the world, and enhancing economic ties that could lead to a new era of mutual prosperity."
Mr Schwarzman - who founded the private equity firm Blackstone - has so far raised $100m from backers including BP, Boeing, Caterpillar, Bank of America and Credit Suisse, as well as "numerous" anonymous donors.
He is hoping to raise the remaining $100m by the end of this year to complete the fund.
The programme aims to send 200 students a year to take a year-long master's degree at Tsinghua - in subjects including public policy, international relations, economics and business, and engineering - from 2016.
They will come from the US, China, other parts of Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Among those on the fund's advisory board are former US Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and American cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Source BBC

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Posted in: China,education

Test-tube baby pioneer Sir Robert Edwards dies

Professor Sir Robert Edwards (left) with Louise Brown (right) and her mother Lesley Brown in 2008

The world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, has led the tributes to the pioneer of IVF, who has died aged 87.

Prof Sir Robert Edwards was knighted in 2011, five decades after he began experimenting with IVF.

His work led to the birth of Ms Brown at Oldham General Hospital in 1978. She said he had brought "happiness and joy" to millions of people.

IVF is used worldwide and has resulted in more than five million babies.

Prof Edwards died in his sleep after a long illness.

Ms Brown said: "I have always regarded Robert Edwards as like a grandfather to me.

"His work, along with Patrick Steptoe, has brought happiness and joy to millions of people all over the world by enabling them to have children.

"I am glad that he lived long enough to be recognised with a Nobel prize for his work, and his legacy will live on with all the IVF work being carried out throughout the world."

'Immense impact'

The University of Cambridge, where Prof Edwards was a fellow, said his work "had an immense impact".

Born in Yorkshire in 1925 into a working-class family, Prof Edwards served in the British army during World War II before returning home to study first agricultural sciences and then animal genetics.

Building on earlier research, which showed that egg cells from rabbits could be fertilised in test tubes when sperm was added, Edwards developed the same technique for humans.

In a laboratory at Cambridge in 1968, he first saw life created outside the womb in the form of a human blastocyst, an embryo that has developed for five to six days after fertilisation.

"I'll never forget the day I looked down the microscope and saw something funny in the cultures," Edwards once recalled.

'Remarkable man'

"I looked down the microscope and what I saw was a human blastocyst gazing up at me. I thought, 'We've done it'."

"Bob Edwards is one of our greatest scientists," said Mike Macnamee, chief executive of Bourn Hall, the IVF clinic founded by Prof Edwards with his fellow IVF pioneer Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecological surgeon.

Prof Martin Johnson, one of his first students, said: "Bob Edwards was a remarkable man who changed the lives of so many people.

"He was not only a visionary in his science but also in his communication to the wider public about matters scientific, in which he was a great pioneer.

"He will be greatly missed by his colleagues, students, his family and all the many people he has helped to have children."

Prof Peter Braude, Emeritus Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at King's College London, said: "Few biologists have so positively and practically impacted on humankind.

"Bob's boundless energy, his innovative ideas, and his resilience despite the relentless criticism by naysayers, changed the lives of millions of ordinary people who now rejoice in the gift of their own child."

Edwards was too frail to pick up his Nobel prize in Stockholm in 2010, leaving that job to his wife Ruth, with whom he had five daughters.

He remained a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, until his death.

His work was motivated by his belief, as he once described it, that "the most important thing in life is having a child."

"Nothing is more special than a child," he said.

Source: BBC

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Posted in: education,Experimental Society

Education game invokes Civilization and others to teach math

Jeffrey Grubb

As difficult as it is for some people to learn math, it is even harder to teach. Math has multiple disciplines and dozens of concepts in each of those areas. If one student out of 30 fails to grasp a single important idea, and the class moves on, it may cripple that student for the rest of the year.

That’s where educational technology company KnowRe comes in with its software of the same name. KnowRe is a teaching tool that adapts to students on a personal level. It learns how well each person is understanding the concepts and adapts the curriculum based on that information — and it does all that in a game world where students win by expanding their math empire.

“We believe that the best education is one that is personalized to the needs of the student and is engaging and fun for the student,” KnowRe director of marketing Gloria Lee told GamesBeat. “One cannot do without the other. With all its gamified features and RPG-like environment, KnowRe first of all helps to engage the student without causing them to check out or feel bored, and then offers our adaptive technology to help identify the student’s areas of need and provide a curriculum that is tailor-made to that specific student.”

Once the software targets a trouble area for an individual, it works on it with the student until they have a strong foundation to start building additional knowledge.

KnowRe is available in beta with an Algebra I course. For any student at that point in their education — be they advanced or remedial — the software will design itself around their needs. It won’t scale down enough to teach the average 5-year old how to solve for X, but it will help a high-school freshman who struggles with that subject.

“Considering that most children and teenagers nowadays are so familiar with online gaming platforms, we believe that students will find KnowRe to be a refreshing and engaging learning environment,” said Lee. “World of Warcraft is probably our biggest inspiration across the board, but there are other influences such as board game The Settlers of Catan as well as Side Meier’s Civilization.”

KnowRe uses an overworld map that is very reminiscent of the Civilization games, but Lee says that the inspiration goes deeper than that.

“In the way that players not only builds an empire, but builds it to stand the test of time in Sid Meier’s Civilization, is very much parallel to the way we think about the matrix of interconnected math concepts that students need to build — like a tech tree — in order to grow one’s knowledge to stand the test of time,” she said.

Up next, KnowRe wants to expand into pre-algebra courses, but it is also considering other science, technology, education, and math-related subjects.

“Our technology was designed with the understanding that knowledge is a compounding activity, which can be applied to other STEM subject areas.”

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Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/08/knowre-invokes-civ-and-other-games-to-teach-math/#CYzBkUULbHmEVMho.99 

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Posted in: education,Environment

Vietnam hires Filipino teachers despite concerns

Filipino teachers are seen sitting for a test in Manila in an attempt to win English teaching contracts in Vietnam in this April 6, 2013 photo.

Despite the debate over the use of Filipino English teachers in Ho Chi Minh City, local education officials have decided to hire them as part of a national English improvement project.

Last weekend, a Vietnamese representative travelled to the Philippines to supervise an exam taken by 53 short-listed Filipino candidates who are trying to get an agreement to teach English in Vietnam.

The applicants earlier made it through a screening and interview process administered by Filipino manpower firms Filsino, Grand, and Jopman, said Tran Thi Thuy Trang, who is working for Vietnamese company AIC tasked with coordinating the project that will cost an estimated US$480 million. 

The exam was set to assess the Filipinos’ listening, reading and writing skills, according to a Tuoi Tre journalist who was in Manila with Trang when she oversaw the test on Saturday.

Trang said that test questions had been assessed by English specialists and the exam papers would be sent back to Vietnam for grading by a panel of experts.

“We will recruit them on the basis of their performance on this test,” she further explained.

Cyrel Palmitos, a 33-year-old resident of Cebu City, told the reporter that she had eight years of experience in teaching English to learners from South Korea, China, and Taiwan at several foreign language centers in the Philippines.

Palmitos said that she has a BA in English teaching and sees teaching the language in Vietnam a “good opportunity” to share her knowledge and explore a new culture.

She is currently paid US$300 a month in her home country and hopes that Vietnamese employers will make it to $1,000, a salary she said would help her provide better care for her two children.

Quality concerns

Vietnamese educators have cast doubt on the use of Filipinos as English teachers since the Ho Chi Minh City education department announced last year a plan to recruit 100 such instructors for K-12 schools in the 2012-2013 academic year. 

The teachers will be paid $2,000 each month to teach at elementary, middle, and high schools chosen by education offices at the district level, the department said.

Dr. Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Dean of the English faculty at the HCMC University of Social Sciences and Humanities, then said that it is advisable to learn English with native speakers.

“So great care should be taken in respect to accent, pronunciation, and intonation before hiring teachers from the Philippines. We should avoid using those teachers who are too Filipino in their English,” Dr. Thu said.

The principal of an international school in the city agreed with Dr. Thu, further explaining that English is a second language, not the mother tongue, in the Philippines, so their accent is certainly not as good as British or Australian people.

Vietnamese students will speak English like Filipinos, not native speakers, if they are taught by Filipinos, he warned.

Nguyen Thanh Hai, chief of a district’s education board in the southern commercial hub, said that local schools are not sure about the quality of Filipino English teachers so they will hire them only when their competence has been proven at other educational institutions.

Vietnam wants most of its students to be able to use a foreign language, especially English, confidently in their study, daily communication, and work by 2020 in accordance with the national project.

Source Tuoitrenews.vn

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Posted in: education,Society,Vietnam